1998U.S.: Michael Feinstein releases his new album, Michael & George: Feinstein Sings Gershwin. * Canada: Club Toronto, a gay bathhouse, launches a regular women’s Pussy Night. * California Gov. Pete Wilson signs a law that makes it a felony to use the HIV/AIDS virus as a weapon to intentionally infect others. * Canada: Toronto all-news TV station, CablePulse 24, launches a one-hour program on gay issues called The Q-Files. * Thailand: AIDS activists picket the U.S. embassy in Bangkok protesting against U.S pressure on companies that produce generic anti-HIV drugs.
1993U.S.: Abner Mason is elected as national president of the Log Cabin Federation, a national group of gay and lesbian Republicans. * The World Health Organization estimate that 4 million women will die of AIDS by the year 2000. * Commanders at the Orange, Calif., police department get a shock when they discover that a man arrested for stabbing his gay lover during a domestic disturbance, is Sgt. Paul S. Gibbs, 42, an 18-year veteran of their department. * Dorothy Hajdys, mother of slain sailor Allen Schindler, tells The New York Times Magazine: ‘If there’s a place in the Guinness records for a woman kissed most by gay men, I’m it.’ * Donna Red Wing is appointed as coordinator for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. * In Virginia, Henrico County Circuit Court Judge Buford M. Parsons Jr. upholds a ruling by Henrico County Juvenile Court that custody of 2-year-old Tyler Doustou should be awarded to Kay Bottoms, the child’s grandmother. Bottoms had challenged the custody rights of her daughter Sharon Bottoms, on the grounds that exposure to Sharon’s ‘lesbian lifestyle’ would damage the child’s psychological development. * Sister Paula, a transsexual evangelist, says: ‘I was born with my mother’s features and my father’s fixtures.’ * France: The French Association for The Fight Against AIDS files a civil complaint against Italian clothing maker Benetton over a series of subway poster ads depicting exposed buttocks and limbs marked with the words ‘HIV Positive.’
1988U.S.: Speaking at a Republican fundraiser, U.S. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, calls the Democrats, ‘the party of homosexuals.’ * Harassment of patrons at a Jacksonville, N.C., gay bar by military police prompts the owner to sponsor a ‘Marine Lookalike’ contest. * Quote Of The Week: ACT UP/New York member talking to the San Francisco Sentinel: ‘Some parts of the gay community said we rocked the boat. (When we zapped Mayor Koch at a gay function). I say we should sink the fucker.’
1983U.S.: The first national gay and lesbian choral festival takes place at New York’s Lincoln Center, and is called ‘Come Out And Sing Together (COAST).’ * Sylvester performs at the Paradise Club in Chicago. * Dr. Frederick J. Buckwold, an infectious disease specialist commenting on the fact that women are switching from gay male hairdressers to female hairdressers, because they fear catching AIDS: ‘Having your hair washed, cut and set is pretty far removed from having sexual intercourse.’ * Novelist and playwright Wallace Hamilton dies in New York City from injuries sustained a week earlier after a fall in his Greenwich Village apartment. The author of 24 plays, Hamilton was best known for his novels, Christopher and Gay, Coming Out, David at Olivet and Kevin. * In Oregon, the Lane County (Eugene) Commission votes 4-1 to bar discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in county jobs and housing.